BootsnAll Travel Community

Hi there,
In pre-emptive contemplation about whether or not to bring a laptop on a working holiday trip that might become more, I was looking at ways to store my photos on the web. Not edit them, not resize them, not even really necessarily share them (although that would be an obvious gain), but basically just store them as they are, so that I could download them onto my computer's hard drive when I got home in who knows how long. Can you do that easily with picasa, flickr, photobucket, or some other photo site I don't know about? Is it easy to get the photos on these sites with cardreader and without any software in most places? Would it be easy to get them back off later?

In terms of the kinds of photos I would want to store: I am a total amateur, my photos are taken with a point-and-shoot camera, with I guess regular resolution. I might want to make prints at a kodak kiosk at walgreens when I get back, the biggest maybe being an 8x11" or something. They won't be for anything but posterity.

Any advice is appreciated!

My experience is only with Flickr. I've been with them since they were the only decent photo site out there, and remain a happy customer. Also, the time investment in switching to something else would be too large now for it to be worth testing them out. It's certainly easy to upload from anywhere, provided the connection is fast enough, which isn't really affected by what site you're using. I'm not sure what "normal" resolution is on your camera - I opted to use high resolution on mine, so uploads did take quite a while in countries with slower internet, and in Egypt, uploading just wasn't really an option.

I found it to be a fairly economical option, though I do have to pay for the "pro" service in order for it to meet my needs (unlimited storage space, unlimited number of photos). I'm not sure how the other's free accounts compare.

Downloading isn't a feature that Flickr was strictly speaking intended for, but because the site is designed to work with add-on applications, it's a fairly simple process. You need to install a third party application on your computer. Flickr Explorer or FlickrDown are two options. Then it's just a few mouse clicks and the downloading goodness goes to work.

I am not exactly sure what your goal is. Will you want to just get the photos off of the memory card to free memory space or are you more concerned with backing up your shots? Providing a little more info, may help me answer the question better.

That said, 2wanderers recommendation for Flickr is on track for thetype of pictures that it sounds like you want to store. Keep in mind, however, unless you have a Flickr Pro account, your photos will be compressed when you upload them, meaning you will lose some image quality. If that doesn't bother you, then Flickr is fine choice. Not to make your decision more difficult: other consumer grade sharing/storage sites worth looking at are Fotki.com, KodakEasyShare, shutterfly, and snapfish.

Personally, I like Pbase.com and Smugmug.com. Both offer online storage and retrieval. I use Pbase to back up some of my shots. Smugmug has a cleaner site and better interface, but I started with Pbase, so... . Smugmug will cost about $40 per year, but there are no annoying ads.

If you major concern is runniong out of memory on your trip, why not buy extra/larger memory cards. Memory prices have been droping quickly.

Another option, depending on where you are traveling, would be to stop in a photo shop and have them copy your images onto CDs. I backed up my shots of Morocco and Spain in a small shop in Marrakesh a couple years ago, when I was traveling without a laptop. The photos on the CDs retained their quality.

Uh, have I completely confused you? Bottom line, Flickr is fine for storage and retrieval of middling resolution photos. Whatever option you choose, try it out before you leave so that you are comfortable with the features.

I've used a Flickr Pro account for years and consider it the best deal. My point-and-shoot takes about 2.7 MB per photo, but you can upload files up to 10Mb (still too low for RAW format).

I would still consider backing up regularly (I get CDs burned).

Upload speed always was a problem with Flickr and remains so for old computers with slow connections, which is what you will get in most internet cafés. However, after many years, Flickr have recently upgraded their uploader and it now works at many times the speed on a good computer. If you have many pictures to upload, consider going to Kinko's or similar service with up-to-date hardware, even if it costs more (we're talking at least 10x the speed!).

I always upload via card reader. Note that not all internet cafés have USB.

quote:

Bottom line, Flickr is fine for storage and retrieval of middling resolution photos.

I'm not sure why only "middling resolution." From what I can tell, any resolution will work fine with Flickr, it's the file format that makes the difference. Pretty much any point and shoot, no matter how high the resolution, will be storing pictures as JPEGs, and I can't see them being less more the 10MB limit. You'll only run into trouble if you've got a professional grade camera that uses a RAW format.

For uploading, Flickr did just launch a new web uploader which claims to use magic pixie dust to increase upload speeds. I have yet to experiment, since I'm at home. I've found that in most of the world, pre-usb machines are now so old that they're disappearing even in the extra-cheap internet cafes. Not 100% gone yet, but in our 5-month trip last year, I can only think of one instance where the computer didn't have a USB port. They certainly exist, but are getting to be pretty rare.

I guess what I mean by 'normal' resolution is that I take most of my pictures on the 1600x1200 range (I assume that means pixles); the highest my camera goes is 2034x1728, which makes the memory card fill up faster. Looking at the file size on either resolution though, they both come out to be JPEG files at 4kb per picture, which has been able to give me fine prints for my purposes.

If I didn't take the laptop, I'd probably buy a bigger memory card (the one I have now is small... 128 MB,) and if I did that, I'd be able to take a lot more pictures. I guess I'd want the site for backup to a degree, but also as a place for storage so I could clear the memory card if I had to. Ideally, I'd prefer not to have to burn CDs if I don't have to... just upload pictures onto virtual hard drive space online somewhere, and then to be able to download them onto my computer's hard drive later.

I already have a google account, and so if picasa would do this stuff, then it might be good to stick with that. In terms of space, my total lifetime of pictures since I've gotten the digital camera about three years ago takes up 1603 MB, and Picasa's free storage is something like 2GB. But if Flickr is better, then maybe I should go with them?

Is that enough additional info?

Well, yeah, 2wanderers is right - Flickr will compress images but only if it needs to get the file sizes below 5MB (10MB for a free account). Files from most point and shoot cameras (especially if you really want to ratchet the resolution down), will not need to be compressed.

If you go with the free Flickr account, remember that there are size and number of picture limitations.

I used Picassa when it was still a baby and found it very functional. It does have an export feature that will allow you to save the photos back to your hard drive when you get home. If you are comfortable with Picasa, then I'd advise to stick with it. Given your shooting history, unless you'll be traveling for a very long time, 400 MB of space remaining will likely be enough.

Regardless, I strongly encourage getting an additional probably larger memory card AND still back up the photos. Even the best memory cards can fail. Imagine getting back home and wanting to show all of your new friends a BnA the fantastic pic of you at Random Bar X, only to find out that the file was corrupted.

Cheers.

Memory cards are dirt-cheap on Ebay. 128MB won't get you far, but I use 2 528MB cards (alternating) and find that sufficient.

Remember to lock your card before uploading. I managed to get a virus onto mine which infected computers at another internet café and the (clued-up) owner wasn't best pleased!

Rather than a laptop, have you thought about a portable storage device?

There are several on the market that take the plethora of media cards available and if you are only after storage then they are a pretty good option.

Dragged mine over Nepal,Tibet and India for nearly 9 months and never had an issue.

Just a thought.